Carl Hume

(613) 697-5428

carl.hume@gmail.com

Experience

March 2019 - Present

HomeStars, Toronto, ON - Vice President of Engineering

HomeStars provided the opportunity to lead all technology initiatives during the transformation from a reviews-oriented website to a full marketplace for home services. 

• Led the creation of HomeStars’ new project matchmaking technology, known as the Distribution Engine, which gave visibility to the supply and demand of jobs across all segments served by the marketplace
• Introduced the HomeStars Data Hub, the system responsible for ingestion, processing, storage and analysis of disparate data sources to generate meaningful insights to manage the marketplace
• Guided the team to adopt Microservices when introducing new capabilities to the marketplace, enabling teams to deliver independently and reducing the change failure rate by decoupling from the legacy monolith
• Evolved the deployment process from predominantly manual with limited transparency to one fully automated with all configuration decisions captured in code
• Grew department from 10 to 30 engineers, establishing four cross-functional mandate teams, each working to achieve outcomes that matter for the business, with full ownership of their software in production

September 2018 -January 2019

Coinsquare, Toronto, ON - Director of Engineering

Joined Coinsquare to lead the software development teams responsible for building and scaling the Core Coinsquare exchange and platform.  

• Introduced initiative planning to create visibility into the work ahead of the Product & Engineering department, and to improve project planning and portfolio management
• Authored the Coinsquare Skills Matrices for Software Developers, QA Engineers, Agile Coaches and Technical Leadership, enabling constructive career development coaching for all team members
• Worked with the teams to enable feature flagging, three new cryptocurrencies for trading, a simplified Advanced Trade user experience, and  a hybrid referral/affiliate  program capability that was the highest converting in the company
• Responsible for 25 team members in the  Blockchain, Core and Exchange cross-functional teams including  Product Managers, Developers, QA Engineers and Agile Coaches

May 2014 - August 2018

360insights.com (formerly 360incentives.com), Whitby, ON - Director of Technology

Joined 360insights.com to lead the Technology organization, including Product, Development and IT

• Led the development of three new products from concept to market availability, completing the product portfolio, doubling claim volume and driving a 400% increase in revenue
• Budget responsibility for all FTE, outsourcing, hardware and software within the technology department of 60 engineers, including phases of profitability and rapid growth
• Transformed the technology organization and culture to adopt automated testing, zero-downtown deployments, and cross-functional product-focused teams, leading to predictable delivery, higher quality, clear responsibility and improved eNPS
• Defined hiring plans, outsourcing strategy and supporting processes to sustainably accelerate product delivery, growing the geographically distributed team from 20 to 60 people enabling eight parallel product initiatives

October 2012 - May 2014

PR Newswire, Ottawa, ON - Director of Content Analytics and MediaVantage

Shortly after PR Newswire acquired the remaining shares of CNW Group, I led the development of a new content analytics service enabling advanced media monitoring capabilities

• Created a service that enabled calling applications to search billions of articles for the ones of interest and extract pertinent characteristics shared by the results.
• Led the team’s adoption of new foundational technologies for the service including Hadoop, HBase and ElasticSearch
• Shipped seven releases of MediaVantage with improvements that were instrumental in record sales growth and user adoption

April 2010 - October 2012

Canada Newswire (acquired by PR Newswire), Ottawa, ON - Director of Development

dna13 was acquired by its Canadian channel and development partner, CNW Group. I joined CNW Group as Director, Development, responsible for MediaVantage and supporting services.

• Led dna13 development through the transition from independent team to part of the larger CNW Group technology organization
• Created an environment where team members could champion and successfully deliver technical initiatives including improved continuous integration and automated deployments
• Predictably delivered six releases/year to market increasing MediaVantage's media monitoring and communications management capabilities

August 2002 - April 2010

dna13 inc (acquired by Canada Newswire), Ottawa, ON - Progression of Roles

dna13 was a leading SaaS provider for PR and communications professionals. The product included media monitoring and content analytics modules, providing insight into brand perception.

January 2005 - September 2009

dna13 inc, Ottawa ON - Director of Development

After several successful releases, I took responsibility for the entire development organization.

• Improved predictability of releases by increasing transparency of the development roadmap and introducing more opportunities for steering and feedback
• Established process for regularly reporting development progress to the senior management team
• Championed creation of new service for content processing and augmentation, effectively handling the tidal wave of social media for MediaVantage
• Represented dna13 technology as part of acquisition due diligence

January 2005 - September 2009

dna13 inc, Ottawa ON - Development Manager

As MediaVantage gained traction in the market, the team grew, along with my level of responsibility.

• Led the Application, Reporting and Sustaining development teams to take 15 major releases to market
• Met regularly with individual developers to provide mentoring and work with them to develop their career paths and improve job satisfaction
• Collaborated closely with Product Management and Quality Assurance teams to deliver innovative new features on time with high levels of quality
• Led retrospectives helping teams adapt their work processes to reliably deliver working software each iteration

August 2002 - January 2005

dna13 inc, Ottawa ON - Senior Software Developer / Architect

As employee #3 I played a pivotal role in the creation of dna13’s flagship product.

• Responsible for the definition, design, development and delivery of MediaVantage
• Implemented unit testing as a best practice, enabling the team to enhance the product reliably
• Worked directly with clients to understand their needs and resolve their issues

Additional Experience available upon request

Education

September 1994 - April 1999

Carleton University, Ottawa, ON - Bachelor of Computer Science, Coop

• Graduated with Honours
• Honours Project received top marks